Men Don't Cry
by Papergirl
Summary: "He didn't cry. Men don't cry." Post ep for Twenty Five.


Title: Men Don't Cry

Author: Amber (ambino1111@prodigy.net)

Category: Angst/Drama ficlet

Spoilers: Up through Twenty Five

Summary: He didn't cry. Men don't cry.

Author's Notes: Whew! What a season finale! I haven't had the impulse to write any fanfic lately, but here it is. And this is a little change for me - I've never written these points of view before. Hope I did all right. And is it fall yet?

*****

He didn't cry.

Men don't cry.

And he was a man. He was a manly man, and crying and other emotions were not his forte. He was fairly capable of hiding his feelings, if he had them. He had no desire to share them.

But he'd had doubts and fears. Horrors plagued him nightly for the past nine months. He was a writer; he had an overactive imagination. What ifs stole from him his slumber, and maybes pecked at his brain.

He was pragmatic, realistic, afraid. He didn't want to be his father, he didn't want to make the same mistakes all over again. Each generation vowed to improve the lives of their children, but he could make no such vow. He was a man of his word, and he had no power to make any guarantee on that grand a scale. He could control his children's safety no more than he could control the weather. 

Instead, he wanted to prepare them. He wanted to love them, and cherish them, and spoil them, and teach them. He would teach them about the world. They would grow up knowing the harshness of reality, the pain and sadness of life, and they would grow up knowing that they could change it. His Huck and Molly would change it.

He knew nothing of babies, of children, of fatherhood. He was a rookie, and nervous, and self-conscious, and most of all afraid. He didn't think he could love, he didn't know it was possible to love with more than all of one's heart, but he did. He did, and it scared him. 

He felt close to Huck already, as all fathers feel instantly, inexplicably close to their sons. But there was something about Molly... a fierce, brutal protectiveness that overwhelmed him. He would do anything for his baby girl. Was this how all fathers felt about their daughters?

He tried to imagine his life without the twins, and already he could not. His previous life was forever in the past, far, far in the past. He had crossed a threshold. He was a different person. He was a father.

For a second, his jaw clenched. His stomach tightened, his heart sped up, and his palms grew moist with sweat. He pictured how his boss felt, how anyone felt, after losing a child... it was unfathomable. The pain, the heartache... he had a powerful imagination, but even he could not imagine the horror. Were he even capable of conceiving it, he would not want to.

He leaned his head against the cool, hard glass of the nursery window. His babies were in there, in their magical hats, with their little fingers and toes and hearts and lives. They were alive because of him, and it was his job to make sure it stayed that way.

His son and daughter were living. They existed, and they were loved.

Tears threatened to escape from the mask carefully in place. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that men don't cry.

Men don't cry.

Daddies do.

*****

He didn't cry. 

Men don't cry.

And he was a man. The most powerful man in the world, although he had never felt less powerful in the entirety of his life. 

He could do nothing. His baby was gone. She was taken from him. Drugged and stolen. The images flashed through his brain, nonstop images of unimaginable horror. He'd known he had an impressive imagination before, but now... it was killing him. He was dying.

And she was already dead.

Leo could say whatever the hell he wanted, Abbey could pretend it would all end happily, but he knew better. Fathers possessed a sense about those things. They might not have much sense in any other matter, but in this case... he knew. The knowledge gave him chills. He would never be warm again. 

He wondered briefly if he'd known beforehand, if the reason he'd been so adamant about her leaving for three months was not because he disapproved of her snotty boyfriend, but because, with some kind of fatherly sense, he had known he would never see her again.

Surely he hadn't known...

She teased him about his protectiveness. They all teased him about it. She graduated from college. She was a full-fledged adult now, whether or not he wanted to admit it, and holding onto his old-fashioned utopian ideal of a family was silly. No matter how powerful he was, no one could halt the passage of time. He needed something to hold onto, though. He loved his girls, his women, so much it hurt. It really hurt.

How had twenty years passed by without his knowledge? He'd had three baby girls, and suddenly they were all grown up. All grown up and gone. 

His arms ached to hold her.

Twenty years. Toddler to teenager in a heartbeat. He didn't care how old it made him feel to have three fully grown daughters. However old he had felt yesterday, he now felt easily fifty years older. Older and weaker and sadder and lonelier. He would soon be nothing more than a shell of the man he once was. A shell and nothing more.

He wasn't a shell yet, though, and the feelings flooded his body. His heart was literally broken. When they checked his blood pressure, he was surprised they found anything, because it sure as hell did not feel like his heart was functioning anymore. 

He wanted to curl into a ball. He wanted to track down his baby girl. He wanted to torture the people who did this, torment their minds and brutalize their bodies. He had a baseball bat somewhere. If not a bat, he always had his hands. He wanted to single-handedly become judge, jury, and executioner. 

Most of all, he wanted Zoey.

He tried to picture her face. For a second, nothing came. His mind was blank, and it terrified him. Had he lost his memories? Did he already forget her precious face? But then the images came, thousands of them, millions, they overwhelmed him and he had to sit down. 

The television had been playing home movies all night and all day, his own personal home movies. They had no right to show his home movies. They had no right to broadcast his memories of Zoey; the Christmases, her birthdays, the Easter egg hunts, the school plays. There was one video of the puppet show he and Zoey put on when she was in second grade. They had worked on it for weeks, rehearsing their lines and painting the sets and building the puppets. Abbey had recorded it, and the image was shaky and out-of-focus because she didn't know how to use the camcorder. He didn't know how they found that movie. That was private. They had no right to share that, to diminish his own memories of his daughter by presenting them to a massive public.

This was hell. He was in hell.

He had told her, warned her. They were special. She could not lead a normal life. When she tried, he scared her. He painted out one of the scenarios that plagued him nightly, one of the fears that stole his sleep. He hadn't meant to make her cry, but she did. He had only wanted... when you love someone as much as... he only wanted to have her safe, wanted to have her happy. He only wanted to have her.

She was gone. That was that. He had no time machine. He had no magic words. The United States did not negotiate with terrorists. Presidents did not negotiate with terrorists. Fathers might, but Presidents did not.

Although, he no longer had the power of the latter, and he no longer had the daughters of the former. He was a leader without a country, a father without his daughter. 

He would not hesitate to kill himself if it could bring her back. He would not hesitate to release all the prisoners, all the prisoners everywhere, if it would guarantee her safe return to his arms. He did not like guns, but he would not hesitate to make an exception. He would not think twice, given the chance, before he shot her abductors in cold blood.

Fathers were supposed to protect their children. Especially their daughters. No matter how spunky and independent they are, children are nothing more than flesh and bone and blood. They are fragile, they are weak. They get scared, and angry, and sad. They cause the greatest joy and the worst sorrow. They are youth, they are hope, they are life... and they are mortal.

His daughter was dead. In a few hours, he was certain there would be confirmation. She was tortured, and killed, and no demands were met. She had thought about her father, about her letting him down, about how he was letting her down. She maybe even cried out for him in her last moments on earth. No one could ever tell him that, but he knew.

His baby girl was dead.

Tears threatened to escape from the mask carefully in place. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that men don't cry.

Men don't cry.

Daddies do.


End file.
